Focused story: ties together opportunities and pain points very simply and clearly

Believable: brings the research to life in a lighter weight way

Example of a Blueprint journey map.

Why this Blueprint example works

Understandable scope: provides a holistic view, for only one part of the service

Grounded in research: emphasizes the number of technologies and players involved back stage

TL;DR! Can you summarize this for me?

Sure.

A chart of the six common types of journey maps.

What makes a journey map “good” or “bad”?

The following qualities tend to determine whether a journey map falls into a good or bad archetype.

The qualities of good and bad journey maps. I think you can figure out which is which.

Let’s look at 3 archetypes of bad journey maps

…and what tool(s) would have been better.

Why this Persona’s Narrative example doesn’t work

Scope creep. No one can effectively process 18 journey maps.

Lack of focus. Rigor is important, but completion for the sake of completion (without strategic rationale) tends to end badly.

The right tool for the job?A workshop. Involve stakeholders to help clarify problem(s) being solved, prioritize the critical journeys, and find overlaps that eliminate the need to map everything.A set of 1–3 journey maps that have clear focus and intent.

Why this Product/Service Experience example doesn’t work

Scope creep. It seems intended to cover all possible actions.

Lack of focus. Does not have a clear story or intent.

Ungrounded. It’s not user-focused or business-focused, and though it’s for a product/service, it’s unclear which one.

The right tool for the job?A report. A taxonomy of archetypes would better record all possible actions.A game. An activity with a cross-functional team would better inspire ideas within a cross-brand current state.

Why this Blueprint example doesn’t work

Scope creep. Too many journey maps with too much detail.

Lack of focus. No hierarchy or story, and no rationale for why there are so many.

Disconnected from real people, and from project needs. People are represented as paragraphs of text, and there are no clear takeaways.

The right tool for the job?Scenarios. A lightweight set of narratives to capture and explore potential variations, which could then be prioritized. Scoped blueprints. After prioritization of scenarios, blueprints could be used to dig into the details of 1–3 small, specific areas.

Ok, fine. What can we learn?

Some guidelines for making journey maps

Here’s an example

Those two questions above? I use them before and during making a journey map. Here’s an example of where I landed, using this approach.

Reality check

Even though this was an enormous amount of content, it’s still not everything. Journey maps don’t fall cleanly into these archetypes — all of them can be hybridized!

The 6 types of journey maps can be hybridized endlessly.

If you only take one thing away from what you’ve seen here, take this:

Know what kind of journey map you are making, and why. Don’t make a journey map just to make one.